BoxCryptor: Easy, On-the-fly Dropbox Encryption

Cloud file storage service Dropbox is a long-time favorite here at WWD — it provides a quick and easy way to store files in the cloud, sync them between different machines and share large files. However, although Dropbox encrypts your data, to be completely sure that your data is secure, you need to encrypt it yourself. Up until now that’s been a fairly laborious process. Enter BoxCryptor, a Windows-only tool that can encrypt and decrypt files on your Dropbox account in a completely seamless fashion.

After installation, you’ll need to provide a password to encrypt your files with and a directory to save the encrypted files in. BoxCryptor then acts as a virtual harddisk, encrypting and decrypting data in real-time. Save a file to the virtual disk, and BoxCryptor automatically encrypts it and stores it in the directory you specified. Retrieving a file is just as seamless.

BoxCryptor is currently free and requires the .NET Framework 2.0 to run. It’s a really easy-to-use tool, but you should note that the version that can currently be downloaded is only an alpha that will fall into read-only mode on 31st March 2011; the author recommends not using it for production purposes just yet.